In Orthodox spirituality the self-love is a passion, a bad thing, which is reprimanded harshly. And this for that, the self-love is a reduction of all life and all understanding at yourself, removing on God from your life.

A man who loves on himself cannot trust in God. A man shut up in himself, a man who does nothing without a real profit, evident, material, is an inapt man for relations and, in the first row, for the highest relation, for the relation with God.

And if the man has made himself an idol, then he considers himself as „his greatest accomplishment”. But the man cannot accomplish himself without God! Without Him the man is dead spiritually and for everlastingness. And one who loves himself is a spiritually dead, although he believes that he is a „fulfilled” man.

The one who loves himself has a high opinion of himself. And who suffers from the disease of the opinion of self is a catastrophe in theology and in the ghostual life. Because he does not want to be taught by God and His Saints, but he relies on his own „theological” imaginations. And the „theological” imaginations are catastrophic in theology and in the life of Church, for that they replace the divine enlightenednesses with the views of fallen man, passionate.

From this motive, the starting point in the Orthodox soteriology is the Holy Baptism and the cleaning of passions. And how the love of self is a passion, the Orthodox is struggling with it to the death.

But how does the love of self die in us? Through the obedience to God and to the Priest Confessor. If we speak and write on how we understand, then we keep ourselves into a humble opinion about ourselves. But if we are launching ourselves in theological speculations, in things which far exceed our own understanding, we show how „rich” are in opinion and self-love.

And why the opinion of self does not make us „theologians”? Because, in theology, the feeling and the sight of God are what make us theologians. God makes us theologians, if we live with Him and enlightened by Him. While the egoism is the mother of stupidity and of all sin. For that the egoist does not want to learn from God and from the people and remains in blindness of self.